page_title: Vince Gair
section_title: The "Gair Affair"
hierarchical_section_title: Vince Gair / Federal politics / The "Gair Affair"
caption_attribution_description: English: Headstone of Vince Gair at Nudgee Cemetery in Brisbane.
context_page_description: Vincent Clair Gair was an Australian politician. He served as Premier of Queensland from 1952 until 1957, when his stormy relations with the trade union movement saw him expelled from the Labor Party. He was elected to the Australian Senate and led the Democratic Labor Party from 1965 to 1973. In 1974 he was appointed Australian Ambassador to Ireland by the Whitlam government, which caused his expulsion from the DLP.
context_section_description: Gair subsequently became disillusioned with the DLP's other senators, who forced him to resign as leader in October 1973. In 1974, when the Federal Labor government of Gough Whitlam was desperately attempting to gain a majority in the Senate, Whitlam tried to create an extra vacancy in Queensland for the upcoming Senate election so as to gain the ALP an increased chance of winning an extra Senate seat.
  Whitlam approached Gair with the offer of the position of Ambassador to Ireland, which Gair accepted on 14 March.  Whitlam intended to keep the appointment confidential until 2 April, when Gair would tender his resignation from his Senate seat retroactive to 20 March, when Dublin cabled its acceptance of Gair's appointment to Canberra.  This would force the issuing of writs for the election of six Senators from Queensland, not five as would normally have been the case.  Labor would have a realistic chance of winning three of those seats, and with it control of the Senate.  Subsequently, when knowledge of the appointment became public on 2 April there was an outcry from the conservative parties. The then Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen decided to thwart Whitlam by causing the issue of writs for the usual five Senate vacancies before Gair could resign.
  In Canberra, a group of Country Party Senators kept Gair occupied in their office, away from the President of the Senate Magnus Cormack (to whom he needed to give his resignation), drinking beer and eating prawns, until 6pm (the Commonwealth Electoral Act provided that writs would be deemed to have been issued at 6pm irrespective of the time that they were actually issued). At 6:05pm, the Queensland Cabinet met and advised the governor, Air Marshal Sir Colin Hannah, to issue writs for the election of five senators for Queensland, and the writs were issued at 11pm.  As a result, Gair failed to resign his Senate position in time for there to be six vacancies instead of five, thus thwarting Whitlam's plan. This delaying tactic was later known as "the Night of the Long Prawns". Gair later claimed he was perfectly aware of why he was being feted by his colleagues, some of whom were former enemies. Gair's actions helped to precipitate a double dissolution. After the 18 May election, the ALP remained without control of the Senate. The 1974 election marked the electoral demise of the DLP, which lost all four of its remaining seats, largely as a backlash against Gair's actions.
caption: Vince Gair's headstone at Brisbane's Nudgee Cemetery.
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